27 October 2006

Prt Scr = Copy Screen

Most of you will know that hitting the Prt Scr button doesn't print the screen but copies a picture of it. Useful when you want to feature samples in notes. Unless you're putting the image across a presentation slide, though, the image is way too big for including in a Word document and is much too big a file for any web page.

To edit it, though, waiting for your usual photo editing software to load can be a drag when you're in a hurry - or you may not be familiar with the version on the machine you're using. A nice solution is to download Irfanview which is an incredibly light bit of software and just opens when you want it to open, almost instantly, and works on ancient equipment too. The basic program will also even fit on an old floppy.

So copy the screen, open Irfanview, paste and use the simple tools to resize the image (and crop it if you only need part). Save the image as a jpg file and it will be a much smaller file size too.

For a bit of fun, try setting a whole screen image (unchanged) as a colleague's desktop wallpaper. Using the initial screen with desktop icons, tray etc is particularly good. Watch someone trying to click on what will look exactly like icons or buttons with no luck whatsoever!

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